A Garden of Vipers Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Jack Kerley

  A Garden of Vipers

  “Kerley knows how to keep us and protagonists guessing—often incorrectly—while heightening the suspense. In less-skilled hands, the macabre events of this crime thriller might have been weighted down in melodrama, but Kerley’s vivid scenery, bizarre characters, and multiple plot twists keep us turning pages ever faster.”

  —Library Journal

  “Kerley has demonstrated a talent that runs deep and true…. His descriptions—whether of scenery or of heartbreak—are so sharp and clear as to be almost painful in their beauty. If you haven’t jumped on this series yet, this is the novel and now is the time.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  The Death Collectors

  “Kerley…writes like a house afire. A boundless and truly ghastly imagination that’ll keep you awake long after you turn the last page.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Explosive…compelling…genuinely surprising…[a] haunting look into the world of the twisted…beautifully written.”

  —Richmond Times-Dispatch

  “Complex plotting…a shotgun’s force of action, a wildly exotic group of characters, and an unusual locale. As page-turners go, this is a beauty.”

  —Library Journal

  “Kerley has lost none of the flair he demonstrated in [The Hundredth Man]. [He] creates a suspenseful narrative that will keep readers turning the pages.”

  —Omaha World-Herald

  “Terrifying…. This one’s another winner from a writer moving toward the top of the thriller heap.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “There is a bright future of good reading from Jack Kerley.”

  —Lincoln Journal-Star

  “A genuinely creepy journey into madmen and their devoted followers.”

  —Booklist

  “A weird police procedural that starts with a bang and never slows down…fascinating…ghoulish…macabre. Jack Kerley writes an eye-opening grisly dark thriller.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  The Hundredth Man

  “A crackerjack plot and wonderfully original rapid-fire prose. Kerley is a writer to watch. And read.”

  —David Baldacci, New York Times bestselling author of The Camel Club

  “Kerley writes in a thrusting style…. There’s a future in this.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “From its expert forensics to its explosive finale, The Hundredth Man is first-rate entertainment and a debut worthy of a repeat performance.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Explosively good…a nuanced look at the dark under-belly of contemporary society that reads like a cross between Thomas Harris and F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “The Hundredth Man is a cracking debut.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A triumph—a stylish thriller with echoes of Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.”

  —The Oakland Press (MI)

  “This is a pitch-perfect psychological thriller, notable for its wit, depth of characterization, gripping plot, highly effective backstories, and the richness of the world portrayed.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Mixing terror with psychology, motives with madness, pounding dialogue and humor…[The Hundredth Man] belongs on your summer reading list.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  ALSO BY JACK KERLEY

  The Death Collectors

  The Hundredth Man

  A GARDEN of VIPERS

  JACK KERLEY

  ONYX

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,

  Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Onyx, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1226-4

  Copyright © Jack Kerley, 2006

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For my children,

  Amanda and John.

  They make life shine.

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50
<
br />   CHAPTER 51

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I exercised broad license in adapting settings and agencies to the whims of the story. Several businesses and institutions do not exist or are amalgams. Everything should be regarded as fictitious save for the natural beauty of Mobile and its environs. Any similarities between characters in this work and real persons, living or otherwise, are purely coincidental.

  PROLOGUE

  Eastern Mobile County, Alabama, early 2000s

  “Are you sure he ran this way? I don’t see anything.”

  “Keep your damn voice down. Don’t touch the blood. And just use light when you need it.”

  Lucas heard voices in the distance and his eyes snapped open. The world was spinning slowly, like he was caught in a syrupy vortex. Lucas threw his arms out to hold on and felt his fingers touch grass. It was night, but he saw the dark shadows of nearby trees. Comets were spinning between their trunks, blinking on and off: comet, no comet. It smelled fresh here in cometland, like dew and wet leaves. A very peculiar effect, he thought. Also peculiar: a single star straight up in the sky, flashing, like the comets and the star were conversing.

  “I see a car! Hidden behind the trees, branches over it. He’s around here.”

  “We’ll have to get rid of the car. Fast. Call for a trailer.”

  Lucas closed his eyes and took a deep breath of cool air. The solitary star blinked. Another comet flashed across the sky. No, not comets, his clearing mind registered; it was flashlights pressing through fog. He was in a field beside a woods, lying in damp weeds bristling against the sides of his face. Why was he in farmland? Why were there flashlights?

  Looking for something.

  Looking for him.

  What had he done?

  The footsteps resumed with the sound of bodies pushing aside branches, stepping on twigs. Flashlight beams swept the weeds and trees. Lucas’s world turned white as a beam crossed him. He made himself lie absolutely still. The light passed by.

  But in the moment of illumination he had seen something odd: His hand was red. He stared at his dark fingers, perversely entranced. Then he realized it wasn’t just his hand: His blue pajamas were soaked with blood.

  The voices started again. Louder and closer.

  “Something’s moving at the base of the microwave tower. It should be to your left. Can you see the tower light blinking above the trees?”

  “Be careful. He’s…resourceful.”

  A montage of pictures formed in Lucas’s head, recent memories playing like a jittery movie. He started to remember and his gut went cold. He should have figured they’d be coming. He knew too much.

  “Shouldn’t the doctor be here, Crandell? Why didn’t you bring him?”

  “Shut up. I’ll circle to the far side of the tower. Keep the walkie-talkie low, light off. I’ll tell you when to move in.”

  It was black and quiet for several minutes. Lucas wiped the blood from his hands to his pants, flexed fingers, arms, legs. He could move now, escape. He drew himself into an unsteady crouch as the comets started flashing again. His world turned white. Black. He stumbled to his feet, his knees like gimbals, seeming to wobble in every direction. Run! his mind screamed.

  “I see him, he’s up.”

  “I’m coming in from my side. Get the stunner out.”

  Lucas took a deep breath, calculated the angles his pursuers had chosen, figured his way past them. He gathered his energy into his core.

  Just as he ran, the world turned white.

  “He just ran into a tower support. He’s down and rolling around.”

  “Go!”

  He heard running feet. Felt bodies fall over him, wrestle him over, his face pressing deep into the wet grass. He felt metal wrap his wrists, pain. He smelled sweat. Aftershave. And a piercing reek of fear, not his own.

  “Zap him!”

  “He’s not fighting.”

  “I told you to—”

  There was a shivering blue explosion and the comets returned, each bringing a hundred stars to the party. They whooshed and tumbled and danced. It was beautiful.

  In the distance, the voices started up again.

  “There’s something all over him. Jesus, Crandell, it’s blood.”

  “Get him up and moving. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  And then a mouth at his ear, hot and wet. A happy mouth, it seemed, like it had just consumed a delicious meal.

  “What did you do, Lucas?” the happy mouth whispered. “What terrible thing have you done this time?”

  CHAPTER 1

  Present time

  A stalled weather front bred thunderstorm cells from New Orleans to Pensacola. Rain dropped in sheets and lightning shredded the sky. Then, as if on a switch, the deluge halted and the air turned sweet and balmy. Ten minutes later, earth and sky were at war again. Mobile, Alabama, was dead center in the conflict.

  “What do you think, Carson?” My detective partner, Harry Nautilus, peered through the windshield wipers. “Time to start loading up animals two by two?”

  “How about this time we leave the mosquitoes behind?”

  It was nine-thirty p.m., the streets almost dead, sane people safe at home. Harry and I were parked near the downtown library. We were working four to midnight, something we did a couple times a week, most bad guys being nocturnal as owls. Not that we’d see much of them tonight; of the five hours we’d been in the car, two were spent against the curb, blinded by rain.

  The radio came to life, the signal mangled by nearby lightning.

  “DB…Eldredge and…truck driver heading to hosp…ains.”

  “Did I hear DB?” Harry said. DB was Dead Body. He grabbed the microphone.

  “Nautilus here, Dispatch. You’re breaking up. Repeat.”

  “DB…corner of Industrial and Eldredge. Called in by a truck driver. Driver en route to hospital with chest pains.”

  We were eight blocks away.

  “Nautilus and Ryder confirm message received,” Harry said. “We’re on our way.”

  Harry jammed the Crown Vic into gear, roared toward the scene. I figure we left a wake like a speedboat. The radio crackled again. Not Dispatch, but another detective team in the vicinity.

  “This is Logan and Shuttles. We’re closer, just five blocks. We’ll take it.”

  Harry growled and keyed the mike again. “Nautilus and Ryder have the call.”

  “Why’s Logan out at this hour?” I said. “I’ve never seen his lazy ass work past five-thirty.”

  The radio crackled with Pace Logan’s voice. “Dispatch, this is Logan. Mark this one ours, we’re almost there.”

  I felt the car accelerate. Harry growled, “Negative on that, Dispatch. Carson and me are making the run.”

  “Goddamn it, Nautilus, it’s ours,” Pace Logan barked over the radio, no longer using Dispatch as an intermediary.

  Harry threw the microphone to the floor. “It’s whoever gets there first,” he muttered, flicking on the lights and screamer and taking a right so fast it about threw me in his lap.

  Harry cut another corner hard, skidding toward a line of parked cars barely visible through the rain. I held my breath and braced for an impact that somehow never arrived. We blew through a deserted intersection and I saw a flashing red light paralleling us one block over: Logan and Shuttles. We were three blocks from the scene.

  “Jeez, Harry. It’s a drag race.”

  “I’m not picking up after Logan again,” he said. “No goddamn way.”

  Pace Logan was a disgruntled, hotheaded old-timer waiting to grab his retirement pay, buy a trailer in Florida or Branson, and make life miserable for a succession of lonely women picked up in bowling alley bars. Logan’s twenty-seven-year-old black partner, Tyree Shuttles, was a new-made detective with the misfortune of being chained to a dinosaur.

  Six or seven weeks back, Logan’s mishandled evidence in a homicide case almost bought the defense a dismi
ssal. Harry and I got called in at the eleventh hour, eleven forty-five, maybe. It took weeks of twelve-hour-a-day work to retrace Logan’s investigative steps, supplanting tainted evidence with new finds. Harry’d finally nailed it using information Logan had overlooked in his own records.

  I’d spent the bulk of my time handling our standard overweight caseload, meaning Harry had mopped up pretty much on his own. Both of us had worked doubles most days, and Harry’d ended up postponing a vacation with family in Memphis. He was still royally steamed about Logan’s screwup.

  I rolled the window down an inch. Between the beats of our screamer, I heard Logan and Shuttles’s siren. It would be close.

  “Next block, Harry. Turn right.”

  A radio car at each end of the block had secured an intersection at the edge of a warehouse district. On one corner was a restaurant equipment wholesaler, catty-corner was an industrial laundry.

  We raced down the street from one direction, Logan and Shuttles from the other. A semi sat dead in the street, a red Mazda a dozen feet from the big truck’s grille. Harry skidded to a stop and dove into the rain, no time to pull on his rain gear. I slid into a plastic slicker and followed.

  Harry splashed toward the Mazda as Logan jumped from his vehicle, almost on the Mazda’s bumper. Logan stepped in front of Harry, finger jabbing, voice angry. The uniformed officers closed in, drawn by the smell of confrontation. I hurried over, rain pouring into my eyes.

  “I’ve got the scene, Nautilus,” Logan said. “Get back in your vehicle and haul ass.”